Pharaoh + Cleopatra

I had a total nostalgia trip when I bought this game. If you don't want to play wars, but just focus on building, building, building, it'll let you do that nearly all the time. It will sap all of your time though. I found myself obsessed to complete the mission objectives and would let it play for hours just to finish completing that medium pyramid. The worst thing about this game is that you can reach a level of debt within a mission from which there is no return. And it's usually when things are just about wrapping up, and you let one thing slip, and the whole beautiful city you've built becomes a plague-infested, robber-run hellhole. Then you find yourself having to scrap a week's worth of play to start all over again. For the love of God SAVE YOUR GAMES when you're at your zenith.

Aaahh.. I'm sorry, i'm just having a massive nostalgia trip here.. Anyway. Like the title says, this was the first ever city-builder i played. Huge thanks to one of my childhood friends for borrowing it to me, all those years back. The only games that i had played on the old Win98, if memory serves, was a few demos of popular titles such as Age of Empires and the only games on disc that i had were, at the time, Worms united, Grand Theft Auto and both of the Star Wars: Rebel Assault games. So this was not just a new game for me to play, it was something totally new genre wise and of course, it was a right pain to get started. I remember that the computers rather beaten disc-drive would literally howl when it installed the game, the loading was obnoxious, the game would start at a glacial FPS then gradually move to a working speed, i remember the narrator stuttering at the start of every campaign mission, it was just wonderful. Anyway, i should really talk about the game shouldn't i? Pharaoh is a rather detailed city-builder set in the time of the great Egyptian Pharaohs, your task is to create a settlement for your villagers to inhabit. You need to balance food-production, industry, health and safety of your villagers and do not forget to pay homage to the great Egyptian gods, they can be very petty if they don't get their mandatory gifts let me tell you.. Now, i really haven't had that much time to play Pharaoh unfortunately. But then again, it is one of those games that you dip in to relax with. The music, ambiance of the bustling settlement, is just peaceful... Until everyone gets the plague because one of the gods decided to be a complete tw*t. To summarize: - Decent Campaign. - Great music. - Equally great visual design. - Multiple ways to f@¤k up completely. - Many hours of gameplay and equal frustration. In all a great game, worthy of a play even to those who haven't played that many city builders.

I've played a number of series: Tropico, Grand Ages, Cities XL, Anno, Sim City, and the Settlers. Despite all those mixture of city builders, I still found myself at the foot of Pharaoh, a fantastic city builder that has a little bit of Anno, Settlers, and SimCity in it. What I mean is the formula in which you build your city. The formula to build a successful city in Pharaoh is pretty clear, residents need water, food, and access to public services such a firemen, merchants, engineers, tax collectors, and more. It heavily relies on roads much like the Settlers, and can be a challenging game because the resource of water and food are placed in certain areas of the map. That is what makes this game so strategically challenging, planning a city that maximizes certain portions of the map. The music is fantastic, is probably the most admired thing in this game. Aesthetic-wise, the graphics still hold up for a game made in 1999 and there are some who actually prefer these pixel graphics over 3-D. First, I recommend you look on Youtube, if the game still catches your interest then at that point you'll probably just want to pick this game up and try it out.

Improved from Caesar 3 and still way above Zeus and Empire. This game will make you go through the building of the Egyptian empire, going through some of the best challenges in the history of the city builders. With the extention, you will be able to spend more than a 100 hours finishing all the missions. There is still an active community, if you like city builders, this game is a must-play.

This game is one of those, minute to learn lifetime to master deals. The basics of the game are intuitive, but there is SO much to do and try that it will devour your free time like a 4 year old let loose in a candy store. While I can't judge the expansion because as a child, I only had access to the original, the original alone is worth more than they're asking for this pack. If you enjoy the sim-city series, or even age of empires two or three, I could not suggest this highly enough.